However, EU officials said just a few returns should be sufficient to convince the migrants they stood no chance of being allowed to stay and to agree to be sent back to Turkey.
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“I am deeply concerned about any arrangement that would involve the blanket return of anyone from one country to another without spelling out the refugee protection safeguards under worldwide law”, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
Amid concerns in Europe about illegal migration into the continent, Mr Cochetel said he was “tired of hearing about irregular migrants” because 91 per cent of those arriving in Greece are from war-torn countries like Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
Macedonian police said on Wednesday that no single migrant had entered the country from Greece since Monday because of the restrictions further along the route.
Vitsas said Athens would try “to convince” refugees to accept a transfer to other reception centres across the country.
“This is putting into effect what is correct, and that is the end of the “waving through” (of migrants) which attracted so many migrants previous year and was the wrong approach”, Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz said.
The United Nations’ human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein voiced alarm Thursday over the draft deal that could see “illegal” collective and “arbitrary expulsions” of migrants from Greece to Turkey. It appears that both Serbia and Macedonia will implement similar measures to redirect the flow of migrants as part of a new continental strategy.
“But for the readmission agreement to work, migrants in Turkey should have the right to apply for refugee status”.
European leaders are grappling with the biggest refugee crisis since World War II, with more than 1 million people having entered EU territory since the start of 2015.
The EU “has no future if it goes on like that”, warned Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tspiras, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the border closures were “neither sustainable nor lasting”.
Turkey’s foreign minister on Wednesday rejected the idea Ankara was “begging” the European Union for money, after it dramatically doubled its demand for funding during crunch talks on Europe’s migrant crisis.
“We will stay here even if we all die”, said Kadriya Jasem, a 25-year-old from Aleppo in Syria, one of 13,000 people living in a makeshift camp in Idomeni on the Greek side of the border with Macedonia.
And it remains far from clear that the message will get through to desperate families who see smuggling as their surest route into Europe as its borders close.
As the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Greece Idomeni border situation remains hard, the European Commission today denied that the EU has moved on to crisis management mode from trying to provide a “comprehensive solution”. That effectively shuts the main route through the Balkans toward western Europe.
Meanwhile, Serbia has said it will harmonize its rules with border decisions by Slovenia and Croatia.
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Speaking at a gala dinner, Tsipras said: “The basis of our meeting today is not only to develop economic synergies”.
